Small businesses and power users often need the flexibility offered by a file server when compared to a dedicated NAS. This is where storage servers based on Microsofts Windows Server offerings and systems based on Red Hat or Ubuntu Linux distributions come into play. These servers can be bought as an appliance or assembled in a do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion. Today, we will be looking at the latter approach using as ASRock Rack C2750D4I Intel Avoton mITX motherboard in a 8-bay U-NAS NSC-800 chassis.

We review the ASUS Radeon R9 390X STRIX. The card's equipped with that renamed Hawaii GPU, now called Grenada. Thanks to a huge triple slot air cooler based on the new DirectCU III design the product is purring at just roughly 83 Degrees C, that's under full gaming load whilst being factory clocked at 1070 MHz on the GPU base clock. The 2816 Stream processor based Hawaii/Grenada chip will get paired with 8 GB GDDR5 memory running along a 512-bit memory interface. The card itself is fully customized including component selection, custom PCB, custom cooling, well... custom everything! Powered through 8-Pin + 6-Pin power configuration it obviously runs at factory overclocked specifications as well.

So to clear up some confusion from the get-go, this product is based on the Hawaii GPU released back in October 2013, the silicon is the same yet with a few tweaks applied the product is now called Grenada, the latest iteration of the asic. It is the very same 6 Billion transistor GPU on that 28nm fab based 438 mm2 Die. Over time the fabrication will however yield better; much like fine wine the latest iterations of the silicon evolve, hence they can now be clocked a notch faster. The memory is tied to a 512-bit memory bus with one distinct difference, you now get 8 GB of graphics memory. That memory is tweaked and clocked a notch faster as well, 6 GHz (effective data-rate) for the reference products, with the MSI model tested today running 6.1 Gbps (GDDR5) memory. The 390X GPU will get a reference clock of 1050 MHz, this MSI SKU is factory clocked at 1100 MHz. So, overall coming from the 290X you should see performance increases running up-to maybe 10% overall, depending on the card you purchase. With the recent focus on Ultra HD gaming, AMD is also marketing that to be pretty significant, hence that 8 GB of graphics memory. It's not new though as there have already been 8 GB SKUs of the 290X available for over a year, let's do mention that as well.

Typically we start our reviews of a new processor architecture in a straightforward manner: the flagship CPU gets a good going over and then we take a look at a new high end motherboard. With Skylake we are doing things a bit differently. While showing off the best of the best will always lead to a huge number of pageviews, this time we decided to highlight a motherboard that most people will actually look into buying: the affordable ASUS Z170-A.

Our i7-6700K review covered a few key points of the Z170 chipset, its capabilities and the reason for changing socket type from the LGA1150 of the Z97 generation. The change towards the new 1151 socket type was a necessity due to the rather large changes that Intel has brought about in their Skylake architecture. There’s DDR4 memory, a new high speed DMI 3.0 interface, a move to PCI-E 3.0 lanes on the PCH and the removal of the fully integrated voltage regulator (or FIVR) that made its debut with Haswell. With LGA1511 these voltage regulators have been placed back onto the motherboard. All in all these changes represent one of the largest evolutions in Intel’s chipset architecture within the last 4 years.

Even though ASUS' Z170-A resides near the bottom of their upcoming Z170 motherboard lineup, it is meant to compete in one of the most hotly contested corners of the market: the $150 price point. This price straddles the line between budget minded users and so-called gaming / enthusiast products. As such it has to appeal to both groups and be competitive in many, many areas including features and value.

The Jonsbo RM1 powered by Cooltek turns some serious heads by being extremely compact and lightweight, but with the ability to swallow a fully sized ATX board. On top of that, it comes with a 5.25" drive bay and small fan controller. All this while using an all-aluminum construction.

Scandinavian by nature, this case is made very smartly and efficiently, but not cheaply manufactured as other economy cases have been known to be. At the very reasonable cost of $60.00 USD you can be sure that you are getting your money's worth with all of Fractal Design cases including the smaller Core 1500 version that we review here and now. The Fractal Design Core 1500 has all the features of the bigger cases with the same type of hard drive mounting systems that most, if not all of Fractal Design cases including the wire management access holes that are uniformly placed with very smooth edges, but you will not find any rubber grommets covering these holes within this particular model which is one of the ways Fractal Design has saved money including the smart use of the same hardware over the entire product line.

15 pages gamescom 2015 coverage ! From 05th to 09th August 2015, one of the most important European gaming fairs took place in Cologne, Germany. Since the first day, we have reported about the gamescom 2015 news in our Forum and at Hardwarespot.de. Today, the full report of the gamescom 2015 is released with more than 350 pictures of current gamescom hardware like many VR headsets, Intel Skylake CPUs, DDR4 RAM, SSDs, Gaming Displays, Mice, Keyboards, Racing Wheels and more gaming hardware, DCMM Casemods, and of course a lot of new Games are published in this gamescom 2015 coverage on OCinside.de. It is available in German only, but it is worth watching the pictures with or without a translation tool to discover the latest gaming and gaming hardware trends. All in all 7 pages latest hardware with Virtual Reality Goggles, an Intel Skylake presentation, a Gigabyte Skylake presentation and additionally a lot of new Games, Casemods, Impressions and more on 15 pages - you should not miss that

For as long we can remember, the go-to music app on Windows has been Windows Media Player (WMP). Sadly, WMP hasnt been updated since Windows 7, which doesnt mean it doesnt work, but its not exactly the latest nor greatest app for playing your MP3s.Click Here to Continue Reading

The Gigahertz war has long been over but it is hard to shake off the intoxicating effects of speed. Although now uncontested and unchallenged in two fronts, Intel still marches to the cadence of a 'tick'-'tock' cycle and builds upon the momentum of previous victories until the walls erected by Moore's Law itself falls. The march toward 14nm proved to … Read more.

In a rather understated blog post, Intel made an interesting move at the end of last week by announcing that for the first time the Xeon platform is heading for mobile workstation platforms.

When I first heard this, I thought ‘wait, is it not already?’, given that I have seen laptops with Xeon processors in the past. The fact of the matter is that those previous platforms relied on desktop processors (either socketed or soldered) from the high end line and were only ever found in custom designs such as those from Clevo or Eurocom which promoted a more modular concept. As a result, these systems were typically heavy, demanding, and featuring more cores/cache/TDP than was expected for a laptop. We also saw consumer processors for notebooks with vPro, but these were typically not ECC memory verified. Intel’s announcement today changes this.

If you haven't heard of MAINGEAR, they are a a custom system builder with close to 15 years in the business using the latest technology to build computer systems that offer the best performance for the money. Using standardized components, makes the systems fully upgradable by the end user, allowing the system to keep up with changes in technology. Rather than having systems pre-built and modified depending on the few options that are available, MAINGEAR hand builds every system taking extreme measures to ensure proper thermal management with optimal cable management, specialized cooling options, and ends the build process with a 72 hour test process and a 100 point check before packaging the system for shipment.

New Moto GWhen the first Moto G arrived back in 2013, it was a revelation. It showed us that phones under £150 didn't have to come with rubbish screens and dodgy performance. Now we're onto the Moto G's third version.What's new? A better camera is the highlight, while water resistance and a 64-bit CPU offer side attractions you don't always get at this price.

There's the one potential issue: price. The Moto G now goes up to £209/$219 for the 2GB RAM/16GB storage version, or £179/$179/$250AU for the plain 1GB RAM/8GB storage edition.The kicker is that if you want the super-smooth performance the original Moto G was hailed for, you'll need to get the more expensive edition. I'll be checking out both editions of the phone in this review. I'm so good to you.DesignNo matter which version of the Moto G you choose, you get the same core design. This year's version uses a removable plastic cover that blocks off the memory card and SIM sockets, providing one of the little guy's key features: water resistance.

Getting in shape is rarely affordable. It's costly in terms of time, energy and, most of all, money. Gym memberships and workout clothes cost enough as is, so the tech powering your routine shouldn't put even more stress on your wallet. Motorola showed with its Pulse that it could make cram a whole lot into its $59 (about £37, AU$80) set of Bluetooth on-ear headphones without sacrificing quality. And thankfully, Moto's gym-friendly offering, the Surround, also impresses without breaking the bank for $69 (about £44, AU$93 but currently US-only). And aside from a minor interface hiccup, these Bluetooth-enabled, in-ear headphones are simply too good to pass up.

The AMD 970 chipset is the mainstream offering of the AMD chipsets. It offers affordability with great features, with the ability to support a huge array of CPU’s thanks to the hugely popular AM3+ socket. The socket was first introduced back in October 2011 and offered the support of the newly released Bulldozer CPU’s. Despite the new CPU socket, many users decided to hang onto their AM3 motherboards as vendors were offering BIOS updates to support the new range of CPU’s.

The 900 chipset in particular features many of the same features as the 800 series and was primarily introduced to easily differentiate between the older AM3 socket (800 series) and the AM3+ socket (900 series). With the 900 series brought HyperTransport 3.1, NVIDIA SLI and AMD Overdrive for simplified overclocking. Since launch, it has undergone many updates such as PCIe 3.0 support, USB 3.0 support and most recently, USB 3.1 support.

So today we have the MSi 970A Krait Edition. Named directly after the Krait venomous snake, MSI based not only the logo, but the colour theme to it. The 970 chipset is the lowest of the 900 series, bringing affordable performance to everyone. MSI has taken this stable chipset and added the brand new USB 3.1 features, which enabled this motherboard to support USB speed of up to 10Gb/s; this is the world’s first AMD motherboard with USB 3.1 as standard.

It may not be immediately apparent that the QNAP TS-453mini is a NAS that accommodates up to four 3.5-inch hard drives. Its tiny footprint (200mmx151mm) requires the bare minimum of shelf space, however that isn’t the natural environment for this particular NAS.

It’s pretty easy to take an existing piece of hardware that has proven itself over the years and slap it on something new hoping that it is still advanced enough to serve the purpose it was meant for. I guess this is where the old adage “If it works why fix it” comes into play. Of course it’s a great way to save money on R&D but there will come a time when the old standby won’t perform as well as it used to and you’re going to be standing with the proverbial “foot in the mouth” because someone else has eclipsed you and is now standing at the top of the hill.

Last weekend was our annual church-wide summer camp, and it was a great time of hanging out with friends, and getting away from the city. Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Kwan mentioned in his SanDisk Ultra II review about some of his conference traditions, but there were some differences this time around. For example, none of us had a case of missing identity by swapping nametags, nor did we buy engine oil for the fun of it. On the other hand, the consumption of instant noodles was ever present. Even though I did not personally eat the noodles submerged in a solution of monosodium glutamate and yummy-ness, many others including Jonathan slurped the midnight snack down. However, if there was any year to eat these noodles, it was definitely this year. This year, our camp accommodations were at a premium, and they became unavailable within the first week of registration. Unfortunately, this meant some regulars did not attend, and others had to find alternative methods. One family who was part of this group ended up driving their recreational vehicle, and set up camp in a parking lot. On the last night of the camp, about thirty people went down to their place, where they set up their barbecue, roasted sausages, and prepared other condiments to go with the noodles. These small additions turned a simple snack like instant noodles into something much more lavish. As I have said before, there is ordinary in the extraordinary, and this was fully manifested, or noodle-fested, here. When we come to today's product of the SilverStone MS08, a similar story can be found. The product at hand is a relatively simple way to accommodate more drives in your system. It may look ordinary, but I can only wonder if there are possibly more hidden perks or additional features to turn this enclosure into something more. I guess we will find out as we dig deeper into the SilverStone MS08 today!

SilverStone may be well-known for their power supplies, chassis and coolers, but that’s certainly not all they product. SilverStone have won my heart in recent years with their high-end audio equipment such as the EB03 AMD and the EB01 DAC, as well as their premium grade headphone stand, so when I found out they had a monitor riser that kept in theme with the design of those other products, I leapt at the chance to take a look at it and complete the SilverStone set that I’ve acquired over the years.

We’ve been waiting the better part of a decade for SSD prices to drop and they have dropped somewhat. Often you find yourself a little cash strapped and can’t afford one of those infernally expensive PCI-E drives where you sign a contract to send your left arm in exchange for the drive. Hardware RAID is usually just out of reach of the average consumer and while hardware RAID cards are great they soon become outdated and an expensive paperweight.

We got together with the good folks over at VisionTek and they were kind enough to send us a second VisionTek Go Drive. You can peek at the VisionTek Single Drive Review but we’ll be recreating some of it here so you don’t have to jump back and forth.